Saturday 12 March 2016 21:28, UK
Manuel Pellegrini refused to call time on Manchester City's title challenge, despite seeing his side held to a goalless draw by Norwich.
Pellegrini had admitted the visitors would need nine wins from their remaining 10 games for a chance at Premier League glory but Alex Neil's relegation-threatened side went closest at Carrow Road as Patrick Bamford hit the crossbar in the first half.
Manchester City - who have not won back-to-back league games since October - are now nine points behind leaders Leicester, who host Newcastle on Monday Night Football, but Pellegrini vowed to fight on until the numbers no longer add up.
"Every time you drop points it can be more difficult, but that will not change my mind [about the title]," Pellegrini said.
"If you mathematically have a chance to do it, you must always think you can do it.
"If you ask me before the first game of the season what we must do, we must try to win all the games and we continue with the same mentality.
"And at the end of the season we'll see how many points we can have and in which position we'll be."
The visitors failed to register a shot on target in the second half, having dominated the early stages of the game, and Pellegrini bemoaned his side's failure to create space in the final third.
"I'm disappointed because of course we wanted the three points," he told Sky Sports. "From the first minute of the game we were trying to be aggressive with the ball and without the ball.
"I feel we had a very good attitude throughout the game, we were very concentrated on our defensive movement, but we couldn't create the space.
"We had a lot of possession but couldn't create clear space to score."
Manchester City had 66 per cent of possession in the game, but striker Sergio Aguero touched the ball in the box just four times, while Wilfried Bony did not register a single touch in the area before being substituted in the 58th minute.
Pellegrini recognised his side's failure to convert possession into chances, and described his players as "static" in the opposition third.
"I think it is one thing to have possession and another thing is to make the movements in the last third of the pitch. Today we were a little bit static in front so couldn't make the space," he added.
"We started with two centre-forwards because we knew we were going to have a lot of possession.
"After that we tried to do it with the wings with Raheem and Fernandinho. But it was exactly the same."
